


peace for our time

by snowdarkred



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Female Harry Potter, Gen, POV Female Character, Post-War, Pureblood Culture (Harry Potter), Rule 63, Wizarding Culture (Harry Potter), Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-09-15 22:46:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16942143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowdarkred/pseuds/snowdarkred
Summary: The first time Pansy saw Harry Potter after the war ― saw her in person, not just in the rags that called themselves newspapers these days ― was at Olixea Kildare's Atholl House for the Tragically Orphaned Charity Gala, and Potter was wearing the exact wrong thing.





	peace for our time

**Author's Note:**

> Ask me how unimpressed I am that JKR says she _loathes_ Pansy Parksinson. 
> 
> A quick thanks to [Ro](http://rospeaks.tumblr.com/) for giving this a look over for me.

The first time Pansy saw Harry Potter after the war ― saw her in person, not just in the rags that called themselves newspapers these days ― was at Olixea Kildare's Atholl House for the Tragically Orphaned Charity Gala, and Potter was wearing the exact wrong thing.

Five and half years had passed since the Battle of Hogwarts. The members of the Sacred Twenty-Eight had been so far depleted, by war and murder and prison, that holding to the old standards of blood purity seemed almost laughable. The Parkinson family holdings were mostly stripped away; all that had been left was a small cottage held in trust by way of a great-aunt and the jewelry her mother had brought into her marriage.

Thank Merlin that the goblins rejected the authority of the Ministry's order to hand over the vaults and accounts of suspected and convicted Death Eaters. What use did the goblins have for petty wizarding squabbles about who was killing who? They did not concern themselves with such matters, and they would not hand over one knut if it would violate a contract signed in blood.

Pansy watched from across the room as Potter floundered socially. Her green formal robe for the Yule Ball had been adequate for a school dance, but against the glitter and class of the gala Pansy and others found it sorely lacking. Marlenisa Rothes visibly cut Potter when Olixea, as hostess, attempted haplessly to facilitate an introduction.

Pansy calculated her options. The Parkinson name was mud to the broader wizarding world thanks to her father's very public trial. Her mother had died in the aftermath. Officially, it wasn't suicide; the rumors said she quite simply willed herself into death rather than face their monumental decline in society. It fell to Pansy to shoulder the name of the Honorable House of Parkinson, in whatever way she could. The only acceptable path for any Parkinson to take was politics ― either through career ladder or the marriage bed.

As things stood, Pansy had no chance at a political career, not without a serious shift in public perception. And no one would marry her with her father's reputation hanging over her head, not even a desperate Carrow cousin.

Well.

_Ad altiora tendo._

Parkinsons always climb.

"Harriet!" Pansy said, sailing in like she and Potter took tea together every other Tuesday. "I had no idea you were coming! This is marvelous! Here, let's catch up."

Pansy firmly grasped Potter's hand, hooking their arms together like two school chums, and dragged her away before she could protest. Pansy pulled them out of sight before pushing Potter into the ladies' retiring room. The two women occupying it to touch up their hair and trade gossip hastily exited after Pansy pointedly held the door open for them, and she locked it after them with a firm and commanding, " _Colloportus!_ "

"Parkinson, what on earth―" Potter sputtered as Pansy turned to face her. Potter's cheeks were flushed and her countenance discomposed, her scar starkly visible through her perpetually disheveled hair.

"You're an embarrassment to witches everywhere," Pansy said, cutting her off. She gestured to Potter's robes. "How are you going to make any connections if you go around dressed like this?"

Potter flushed even deeper. "I'm here to support the charity, not to win best dressed in _Witch Weekly_."

"Well, no one could accuse you of that," Pansy said frankly. "You'd win a lot more support if you showed even a modicum of interest in our culture."

"I think I've had enough of pure-blood culture, thanks," Potter said.

Pansy resisted the urge to stomp her foot in frustration. It was not, she thought, probably Potter's fault that she was completely oblivious to the world around her. According to the breathless exposé articles published after the war, she'd been raised by muggles. The half-blood infant who banished the Dark Lord, however temporarily, shunted off to some muggle relatives and doomed to be raised in ignorance. It was beyond comprehension.

"It's wizarding culture," Pansy said with all the patience she could summon. She was drawing from a shallow pool, but Gryffindors needed careful handling. "And considering all of the changes Granger and Shacklebolt are pushing for in the Ministry, I thought you would be more interested in _networking_ ," she emphasized, "to support them."

"I have no interest in adhering to whatever arbitrary standards you think I should just to get certain people to like me," Potter says bluntly. "I've had enough of that too. Kingsley and Hermione are doing just fine."

"Then why come at all?"

"To support the charity."

Pansy stared at her.

Potter rolled her eyes. "Is that so unbelievable?"

"No one shows up to these things just to be charitable," Pansy said. "It's three hundred Galleons a plate."

"Hopefully the food is good then," Potter said blithely. She moved to brush past Pansy towards the door, but Pansy stepped into her path. "Parkinson, I'd really rather not ruin the event by having to arrest you for attempted kidnapping."

"I cannot, in good conscious, let you go out there looking like this," Pansy said. "There are photographers; it would be front and center in the society section in the morning print."

Potter pursed her lips. "And why would you care about that?"

"Because," Pansy said, "it took me five weeks to get Olixea Kildare to let me buy an invitation, and she charged me double for the privilege. Because I can't get a job at any department in the Ministry or an apprenticeship at any Guild higher than Clockmaker or even so much as an interview at _The Daily Prophet_. There's no way forward for me unless I mitigate the damage done to my family name."

Potter didn't look impressed. "There are other jobs out there, and anyway, I know that you have more than enough money."

The 'Savior of the Wizarding World' had been in training when the aurors tried to serve Gringotts the warrants for the Death Eater vaults and accounts. The standoff had lasted three whole days and almost triggered another goblin war, until the Ministry was forced to fold ― at least for now. All those ancient family artifacts locked away from prying eyes and all that pure-blood gold collecting interest was too big a temptation for the Ministry to let it go for long. They would try again, and Pansy had to have the political capital needed to protect her inheritance.

"It is the duty of every heir to add to their family's prestige," Pansy said. "I can't be the first Parkinson in four hundred years to leave behind less than what I received."

She could see Potter consider bringing up Pansy's father and the confiscation of their lands. She watched as Potter visibly put the jab aside.

"I don't think I'm the person who can help you rebuild your family name, Parkinson."

"You did it for Draco."

"I did it for Narcissa," Potter said. "She saved my life."

Pansy, as she was well aware, didn't. She closed her eyes, unwilling to resort to begging. What a stupid girl she had been, playing a game she thought she had understood. Look at what her foolishness was costing her ― a series of miscalculations, driven by emotion, made at the worst time, and she was suffering the consequences. It didn't matter how much her father had tempered his testimony to try and shield her and her mother. Her own actions had undone his work before he had a chance to even begin.

Maybe if he hadn't thrown everything away following a mad half-blood she wouldn't be in this mess, a vicious part of her thought. Maybe they'd still have her childhood home and their good name and her mother would still be alive.

She opened her eyes to find Potter with her arms crossed over her chest and eyes narrowed behind those ugly glasses, watching her closely.

"What would I get out of building up your reputation?" Potter asked like she was considering it.

"You're an auror now," Pansy said carefully, not giving away the hope that had sprung up in her chest. "You need to be able to move through any stratosphere of society without looking or acting out of place. What would you have done if you'd been sent to this gala undercover? How will you convince people of the...reforms you want to make if they won't take you seriously?"

"They should take me seriously regardless," Potter muttered.

"You're thinking like a soldier," Pansy said as neutrally as possible. Potter looked and acted like a soldier too, out of place among the decorations placed around Kildare Hall for the gala. It just compounded her inappropriate choice of dress to the event.

"Then what should I be thinking like?" Potter asked.

"A politician," Pansy said.

Potter made a face at the word. "I'm an _auror_. I have nothing to do with politics, and I don't want to."

"Of course you do," Pansy said, astonished. "Politics is in everything; you've witnessed that first hand. Potter, not a thing in society is unaffected by politics. The food that is grown, the tariffs and export taxes placed on goods, safety regulations, the floo network, the owl post, legal proposals ― it's all politics." Pansy thought about what Potter's likely exposure to wizarding politics was and―

"There's more to politics than being someone's figurehead," she added quickly. "You have real political and social power. You can't tell me that there aren't things you want to change ― being who you are, being what you are, you can do that."

"And if I want to make so that what I'm wearing is considered acceptable dress by pure-bloods?" Potter asked.

It was Pansy's turn to make a face. "You would have to work _very_ hard to make that happen."

Potter tapped her fingers against her sleeve, mulling it over at a grinding pace. Pansy almost had her.

"My mother is dead, and my father is in Azkaban," she said. "There's no one left to fix my family but me."

"What did you have in mind?" Potter asked finally. Pansy nearly sighed in relief.

"First step is fixing your robes into something...more suitable," Pansy said. "Then tomorrow, you can call on me and we can discuss the finer points of wizarding culture."

Potter looked down at her robes uncertainly. "What exactly is wrong with them?"

"Oh Potter," Pansy said gently, " _everything_."

Pansy used every trick her mother had taught her for emergency wardrobe adjustments. She changed the fabric of Potter's robes from a silk more suited for a man's morning suit to an elegant crêpe-de-chine that glimmered in a shifting weave. The color was mostly fine ― someone in Potter's life, at least, had the sense to put her in green ― but Pansy deepened it to classic emerald. The cut was unacceptable, so she changed that too, making sure the transfigured fabric draped becomingly over Potter's well-muscled form. Potter wore no jewelry (simply _shocking_ ) or headpiece, so Pansy transfigured one of her hair pins into a simple bracelet. Flowers pilfered from the bland decorative arrangements in the corner were changed from carnations to a mix of hellebores, winter jasmine, and, yes, pansies.

Potter narrowed her eyes at her but said nothing as Pansy quickly wove the flowers into a wreath. Pansy twisted Potter's hair back into something approaching refined, froze it in place with a charm, and then crowned her with the wreath. She stepped back and took a moment to appreciate her own handwork.

"It'll only last a few hours, but I think we can make it through without you bringing shame to the Potter name," Pansy said. Potter looked annoyed, until Pansy took her by the shoulders and turned her to mirrors.

Potter looked at herself in her new, temporary finery and then blushed fiercely. Pansy didn't bother to hide her self-satisfied smirk. She fussed with her own hair and adjusted her headpiece to allow Potter time to collect herself.

"I...thank you," Potter said barely able to tear her eyes from the mirror.

"You're welcome," Pansy said, because it was important to acknowledge others' gratitude toward you. "Now, I think we're seated at tables near each other, so just copy what I do and you'll hopefully be able to handle dinner service without an egregious faux pas."

Pansy looped her arm with Potter's again and made sure they reentered the gala with all the charisma and gravitas she could muster.

"See," Pansy said with a sharp smile as lights flashed, "there are photographers."

**Author's Note:**

> You can come talk Harry Potter to me on my [tumblr ](http://snowdarkred.tumblr.com) if you want.


End file.
